Don't Touch the Animals! Travel with the Baysides: Spain

As we made our way through Spain to Portugal, our route took us partly along the French Way of the Camino de Santiago, the 10th-century pilgrimage route that people still walk from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Santiago de Compostela. We stopped to see some of the pilgrim sites on the way. Our first stop was the historic Spanish village of Sahagún.

After stopping at Sahagún, we arrived about an hour later at Hotel Rural Via Avis (Way of the Birds) in Santa Catalina de Somoza near Astorga for our two-night stay. The Via Avis was a beautiful and cozy place in a restored 18th-century village building with a small courtyard and four private rooms. Over breakfast, the owner explained to me that the name of the hotel comes from pilgrims following the migration of the birds in the northern hemisphere, the same path as the Milky Way, which it turns out is the same path as the Camino. Fascinating!

On our second day we toured the nearby villages of Castillo de los Polvazares, Santa Columba de Somoza, Rabanal, and finally the pilgrim site of Cruz de Ferro. We also visited to town of Astorga just down the road and saw the Episcopal Palace by Catalán architect Antoni Gaudí and the gothic Astorga Cathedral.

In Sahagún were the ruins of a monastery from the 10th century still stand—